My destroyed head

“Stand straight and still,” he said

My long hair tousled, a children’s book balanced on the top of my head

So proud I was, spine reaching for the sky

I had nailed walking with it on my head on my very first try

My cry of delight had drawn his gaze

A flicker of eerily silent rage

He moved to the left of me. “Can you walk with this?  Let’s see”

His work trousers brushed against my knee

The local phonebook, yellow covered, floppy on all sides

Carefully settled, two big fingers pinched a corner so it wouldn’t slide

A shadow of hand, his blank-dangerous face in the corner of my eye

He never explained why

a fist came down in the middle of the book on the middle of my head

The pain fast rain down my face, into my jaw then up my forehead

Bees in my ears, fireflies in my eyes, a spinning chair

and softly golden speckled air

“It will be the hammer next time,” I heard him say

He left the book on the carpet for me to put away

It wasn’t the first time, nor the last

Now I wonder if those shock filled jaws from the past

are the reason why my brain doesn’t work so well

my head full of a trauma magic spell

I fumble a shopping list, forget the meat in the oven

Employment?  I muddle things despite weeks of discussion

I’ve tried to work it out, get on top of it somehow

That fog in my brain, destroying my dreams then and now

Should I blame the drink?  Drugs? (used to wish I could afford some)

But I ditched the wine and I still feel dumb

What about the long-gone psych meds? 

They numbed my mind, so did they do in my head?

Or seizures?  Do they have a part to play?

Have they caused my brain to decay?

Maybe it was brainwashing – the child me told what to do, to feel, to think

Now I can’t make decisions - in my brain some missing link

Physical pain, the foggy headed fatigue

Everything meaningful seems out of my league

I start something, then fall on my face

Can’t hold down a job, in this world can’t find a place 

Chaos in my mind, thoughts in constant agitated flight

I get everything so wrong, even though I try so hard to get it all right

No room in my head for everyday life

So, I endlessly get myself into strife

I jump at noises, shake in crowds

Ashamed, embarrassed, cowed

Conversation?  Can’t talk about my past, do nothing interesting today

Hit and miss if I’m okay

At the movies I cry, sometimes cannot stay

My friends sigh, walk away

I try so hard to be all that people want me to be

They tell me to just get over my PTSD

You don’t try hard enough, they say

So few invitations – most I now knock back anyway

So many things I have never done

because I don’t know how to have fun

They don’t understand me, I don’t understand them

I sure wish though I wasn’t condemned

Perhaps there are just too many things which happened to me

a life too complicated, too drenched in fear and pain, you see

Perhaps inside myself I went to ground

and never came back, lost and never found

It scares me, my dodgy brain -

always overwhelmed, clear headedness never attained

My biggest grief – how life-pain has affected my mind

I rage against the blur - feel like I’m slowly going blind

My head a tangled mess of trauma

Originally written March, 2018